Consumer Guide Album

Willi Carlisle: Winged Victory [Signature Sounds, 2025]
Kansas-born, Arkansas-based Carlisle is the most idiosyncratic folkie protest singer to noodge my recall memory in years. "We Have Fed You All for 1000 Years" he begins before citing the bad TV, frozen food, and conservative neighbors besetting "a house we can't afford" and moving on to the unheard-of stuff best summed up by a lissome mid-LP waltz disconcertingly titled "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears," which at the very least prepares us for "Big Butt Billy," which in turn I betcha is the first folk song if perhaps not talking blues ever to use the word "nonbinary." So right, sexuality is on the table here—almost as much as poverty is. A−